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How long is far longer lol:P a couple of seconds , minutes , hours? Hard to say, but probably tens of seconds, maybe a minute or so. I can make do with a minute il go with 2k then as its stll in extended support till july 2010

How long is far longer lol:P a couple of seconds , minutes , hours?

Hi got an old laptop running good old windows 3.1. It has 128MB RAM (Upgradeable to 256MB though) , 3.2GB hard drive , Pentium 2 233mhz , floppy drive , USB cd rom drive ( the laptop didnt have a cd drive so ive purchased one as this is obviously required if i want 98 or 2000) Im deciding between win98SE and windows 2000 pro. Which one would run smoother? I do understand that windows 98se is now out of support and that all the windows 2000 support is ending in july 2010. For this reason , as well as better usb support in 2k , i would prefer to go with 2k but i dont know whether the laptop will be ok with it Help, much appreciated Kindest Regards

Thanks for the suggestion Level , im getting my new hard drive sometime soon so il be able to test it out . You dont think that the failing hard drive could have had anything to do with it do you? Also , is it possible to restore the Hardware Abstraction Layer if its "screwy" as you put it? Oh and another thing , where do i press F5 in vista install because im not installing xp

So does this mean that my old failing hard drive might have been the cause of the cd freezing? So it wont freeze when i install on the new drive? And also , i cant check whether it improves the boot time if i cant install windows because the drive freezes. I think il replace the CDRW combo , install windows onto the new drive , then replace the DVD burner and install the firmware update Thanks for everyones help so far

NEw hard drives coming tomorrow so hopefully a new install on a new blank drive should solve this once and for all

Ive found the latest firmware update but i cannot test it as my pc is currently sufffering from a dead hard drive. Im getting a new hard drive tomorrow. and as to sending it back , it works like it should in windows , its just booting off discs when it freezes up and i got it form a computer fair (brand new though) As to a clean install on the new drive tomorrow , the only thing i can think of is to replace the CDRW combo (thank goodness ive still got it) , do the clean install , then change the drives over and install the firmware. Unfortunately , there are no spare IDE connectors in my machine as i was planning to connect the combo and the DVD burner at the same time so i could listen to music and play games at the same time etc. I might get one of those addd on PCI cards off ebay for that though:) All help so far much appreciated

Thanks for the suggestion nitroshift but ive used several different bootable discs and they have all frozen. Also , i know that these discs have defininitely worked because ive used them before (with the old CDRW combo) Hope this helps someone to work this out for me Thanks for all the suggestions so far

Yes i removed the CDRW combo first and uninstalled its drivers. The Superdrive is set as master so the jumper settings are all right

Hi I have a very annoying problem - hopefully someone on here can work it out. My PC came with a standard CD/DVD reader plus a CD Writer (all in one drive though) I wanted to burn DVD's so i bought a "Superdrive" which writes to all CD and DVD media. From within windows , the drive does all its supposed to. However , i am trying to do a reinstall which i have done before ( pc very slow , want to start again , clean install etc) When i boot up my computer with my XP CD and i get the "Press any key to boot from CD/DVD" message , setup inspects my hardware configuration then hangs for 10 mins or so. After 10 mins , i get the blue screen with Windows Setup at the top etc and it says "Setup is loading components" (COMPONENT NAME HERE)apart from it takes about 20 minutes to get off thescreen and to get to where you can start specifying options eg where you want to install etc. This is what i dont understand because the old drive didnt have a problem and the component names flew past so fast i couldnt read them. However , with the new "Superdrive" the drive whirs up and makes quite a bit of noise (normal though) and then it suddenly dies down and is really quiet for 10 mins. Then it starts spinning back up and carries on with the install. I thought it might be the drive failing , however i doubt it as the drive is only 3 months old Hopefully someone will be able to shed some light on this Help much appreciated

HP technician said that my master drive has to bre less than 137GB - thats what caused the hang. The 40GB HD died on me yesterday so ive bought a brand new 120~GB western digital drive which should solve the problem with (yet another) reinstall Thanks for everones help on the problem

Yes theres a BIOS upsdate on the Hp website dated September 2007 . It says that the BIOS update resolves a problem with the system hanging during bootup.........................(wait for it)............................when connected to an ipod shuffle I dont even have an Ipod but i applied the update anyway and the 1 minute hang is still there Does anyone have some other suggestions as to why i cant get anywhere with the 320GB drive as the only drive and set as master , but if i put the 40GB one in (even if i ts formatted with nothing on it) it will let me boot into BIOS , or boot of a disc etc. Also , can anyone guess how long my HD's got? With it being a Seagate i downloaded their diagnostic tool but both the 40GB drive and the 320GB drive passed the diagnostics I really appreciate the help that everyone has offered so far

Just an update on this I formatted and removed the 40GB drive (master) and set the 320GB from slave to master. However the computer doesnt get past the HP logo when i s witch it on. However , the second i replace the 40gb drive as master , i can boot of a disc and get to window setup or boot into windows (after the 1 minute hang). I completely formatted the 40GB drive and tried a clean reinstall. Everythings a lot faster but i stilll get the 1 mnute hang. I guess il have to live with it until the HD dies Can anyone suggest why it wont let me use the other drive as master , even though its the only drive (whe i remove the 40GB one) , completely formatted and set as master. I cant even get into the BIOS when the 320GB drive is master. My PC just locks up when it displays the HP logo.

I have been itching to switch the drives over so my 320GB is master. The only reason i havent was because my computer came with the 40GB drive tehn i added the 320GB one myself as a slave. I didnt want to mess about because of all my data on the hard drive so i left it as it was. If the 40GB eventually goes then il make the 320Gb my master and only main hard disk. Il probably then install a clean installation of Vista on the 320GB drive. thanks for everyones comments so far - i really appreciate your help

If my hard drives about to fail then il save whatever data i want , switch my secondary hard drive (Hitatchi 320GB) to master then do a clean windows install. anybody else got any suggestions Thanks for the quick reply by the way - i only posted this morning

Hi There My Pc is currently experiencing the symptoms of microsoft article KB314503. "When you try to start Microsoft Windows XP, the computer may appear to stop responding (hang) with an empty, black screen immediately after the power-on self test (POST) is complete and before the Windows XP logo typically appears on the screen." However , despite the computer hanging for about 1 minute , i then get a loading bar ( exactly like the one in windows 2000 bootup) and then windows xp continues to load as normal. I have tried several things to resolve the problem , all to no avail Heres what ive tried :- Repair install Clean install onto formatted hard drive Used recovery discs that came with my computer FIXMBR command in recovery console FIXBOOT command in recovery console Used onboard VGA instead of graphics card. Reinstall XP bootloader using EasyBCD The master HD on my system i s a Seagate 40GB IDE Drive . Its nearly 4 years ld - could the 1 minute hang be a warning thats the Hard drive is about to fail? All Help on this much appreciated I can live with the problem but it is very frustrating

You can also use a freeware program called easybcd (google it) Its really simple to create and remove bootloader entries Ths can also be used to reinstall vista bootloader and xp bootloader should you ever have boot problems